Residents and visitors of Idaho Falls on Friday morning were treated to a rare sights a as a 'snow rainbow' appeared early in the morning. The special weather phenomenon, also know as a sun dog, is caused in a similar way as a rainbow. Light reflects through small water or ice particles to form the rainbow halo of light. While not technically a rainbow, since those can only be caused by spherical raindrops and not the complex surfaces of ice crystals, the sun dog is a cool sight to see. has a good explanation of the difference between a rainbow and a sun dog, but even they acknowledge that it is a nice celestial phenomena. We are constantly treated to interesting and often unexplained lights and sounds in Idaho. We get weird booms and flashing lights that have no agreed upon cause, so it is nice to have a something happen that isn't blamed on aliens.

East Idaho News posted the pictures of this morning's beauty on their Facebook page and asked their fans to post their own pictures. Their people did not disappoint and you can see a bunch of great sun dogs at the Facebook link. In July of this year we were treated to probably the coolest double rainbow I've ever seen. Then in September the skies darkened with what was the scariest looking storm I've seen cross over the Magic Valley. Luckily it was just scary and didn't do any real damage.

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